If necessity is truly the mother of all invention, then experience is the father.

Necessity and experience combined to create Veterans Life, our new monthly publication for the 38,000 veterans that call Kitsap County home. And, we mean the veterans of all seven uniformed services that comprise five generations of war time service – including the long years of the Cold War.

The necessity comes from general lack of ability of the main stream press to focus on the true needs and issues facing America’s veterans – a large population. It happens simply because there are not that many veterans employed in the newspaper business to begin with. And, the truth of the matter is that non-veterans, no matter how motivated, cannot understand the plethora of complex issues, events, needs and concerns surrounding the veteran community. For the most part, newspapers and the at-large media parade veterans on their front pages twice a year – Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Here in Central Kitsap, for a day, we add the Armed Forces Day Parade route full of veterans and active duty.

Much of our experience comes in the form of editor Greg Skinner, who served with several infantry regiments from 1987 to 1994 in Germany, the Middle East and stateside. Then, for 18 years worked his way through veteran issues and health and education benefits. The rest of the experience, will hope, will come from the  readers.

In the pages of this issue, you’ll find Veterans Life, a monthly news and feature magazine that explores the “geographica” of veterans life in Kitsap County. Written for veterans and edited by a veteran, our mission is to build a  monthly newsmagazine that you can count on for needed information on befits and veterans rights as well as the trends in local veteran issues and the general goings on in the community.

This week, we’ve delivered it to everyone in the county because census data shows that the veterans are everywhere here. In the following months you’ll be able to get a copy of Veterans Life at more than 100 locations from Bainbridge Island to Port Orchard.

Greg Skinner

Editor